Google elbows into cloud services

In a battle for dominance in cloud computing, Google is taking on Microsoft and Amazon in their own back yard.

Google said on Tuesday it was doubling its office space near Seattle, just miles from Amazon and Microsoft, and stepping up hiring of engineers and others who work on cloud technology.

It is part of Google's dive into cloud services. In cloud computing, many servers are joined to create a giant machine to handle many tasks at once, from storing data to running sites and mobile apps to tackling complicated analytical problems, which individual software developers, large firms and governments rent to run operations at a lower cost. Amazon Web Services is the leader in this area.

Users say Google's cloud business is inexpensive and capable, but lacks features of AWS. Google has said its cloud services will cost 50% less than rivals'. But AWS is prepared to take on Google.

"We've always been very good at making everything as low-cost as possible," said Adam Selipsky, who runs AWS, "then we lower it some more."